Five American Muslims sue FBI, attorney general over travel watch list

Plaintiffs decry "invisible web of consequences that are imposed indefinitely."

A group of five Muslims (four of whom are United States citizens) have sued top American government officials, alleging that their constitutional rights have been violated for having been put on a federal watch list.

The plaintiffs' lawsuit, which was filed on Thursday in federal court in Detroit, accuses numerous leaders—including the attorney general, the directors of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, and others—of violating their constitutional rights to due process and the right to be free from religious discrimination.

In the complaint, each person outlines a similar story: being detained at the border, often having digital devices seized, and being subject to prolonged physical searches. One was told that he was on the no-fly list and was later offered a chance to work on behalf of federal law enforcement in exchange for removal. He seems to have declined.

“This is the most common complaint that our office receives,” Lena Masri, the plaintiffs’ attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told Ars. “Each of these plaintiffs has exhausted the only remedy available to them, which is an inquiry process, which is futile. Each of these plaintiffs is representative of American Muslims.”

The federal government has 60 days to formally respond to the lawsuit—the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

“This lawsuit is an expression of anger grounded in law,” the complaint begins. “Our federal government is imposing an injustice of historic proportions upon the Americans who have filed this action, as well as thousands of others. Through extra-judicial and secret means, the federal government is ensnaring individuals into an invisible web of consequences that are imposed indefinitely and without recourse as a result of the shockingly large federal watch lists that now include hundreds of thousands of individuals.”

Further Reading

New docs: NYC, Chicago, Houston, San Diego, and Dearborn, MI provide the most suspects.

“These consequences include the inability to fly on airplanes, to go through security without having all screeners receive a message for the reminder of your life that you are a ‘known or suspected terrorist,’ to obtain licenses, to exercise your Second Amendment right to own a firearm, and to be free from the unimaginable indignity and real-life danger of having your own government communicate to hundreds of thousands of federal agents, private contractors, state and local police, the captains of sea-faring vessels, and foreign governments all across the world that you are a violent menace," the complaint states.

The plaintiffs ask the court to remove affected people from relevant watch lists or databases and to create a "legal mechanism that affords [those affected] notice of the reasons." They also ask the court to declare the government's practices unconstitutional.

Difficulties in Dearborn

Last month, a set of newly published documents showed that under half of the people on the United States Terrorist Screening Database have “no recognized terrorist group affiliation” and that nearly 1,000 new names are added daily.

An August 2013 chart, published this month for the first time by The Intercept, shows that there are one million names on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE). Of those, 680,000 were on the aforementioned watch list, and of those, 280,000 had “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.”

The Intercept did not reveal how it got the documents, only saying that they were obtained “from a source in the intelligence community.” In the past, The Intercept has published documents obtained as part of the Edward Snowden cache, but it has specifically mentioned his name when it does so.

Further Reading

New report on terrorism "blacklists" suggests it won't be easier the next time.

The chart shows that “900 to 1,000” records are added or “enhanced” per day, with just 60 records removed in a 24-hour period. The same document highlights five American cities as being the primary providers of “known or suspected terrorists,” including New York City; Houston; Chicago; San Diego; and Dearborn, Michigan, a Detroit suburb of 96,000 people that is home to a large Muslim and Arab community.

At a press conference held in Dearborn earlier this week, Barbara McQuade, a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Michigan, said that no one from Dearborn has ever been prosecuted for terrorism.

“To the people of Dearborn, I say to you: ‘I stand with you. I’m here to serve you, to work with you, to protect you.’ To the people outside of Dearborn, I’m here to tell you that we should all be so lucky to have neighbors like the great neighbors in Dearborn,” McQuade said, according to the Dearborn Press & Guide.